If you want to keep weeds down around newly planted trees or in your strawberry patch, use large cardboard boxes or old carpet (made from natural fibres). We dug up the strawberry patch this year, put down an old carpet (pattern side down), made small holes and replanted the strawberry plants. It has really reduced the weeds. The cardboard and carpet dies away in time … dust to dust.

Where would you be without those blue or orange bits of baler twine? Once the baler twine comes off the straw or hay bales, it has another life (or two) ahead of it. Use it to repair fences, secure temporary electric wire fences, repair halters, replace a belt in trousers, repair a clothes line, act as a lead for the dog, tie the navel cord of a newborn calf if it is bleeding, tie the tops of bags [...]